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Social perspectives

"I hate to admit it, but now I have one too. Yes, I
bought a mobile phone. I’ve taken a cable TV subscription, too.
It’s not because I really need them; I could get by perfectly
well without these things. But my friends all have them. They
talk about them and I hate to feel left out," Matilda Blyth
admits. "Often that’s how it goes with new technology. The
device has a function but it’s not the main reason people buy it.
They buy it for everything it expresses about who they are and
whom they identify with. It is a way for people to communicate
socially shared meanings. Technology acts as social glue, holding
people together."

When you ask designers about this topic it becomes clear that
they are generally not well informed, Blyth explains. "They
have specific conceptions of consumers, believing that they buy a
new product because it meets a certain need. But in reality
people rarely have a well-worked-out picture of their future
desires."

People often admit that they do not really need technological
devices such as the computer, Blyth says. But they are keen
enough to show the researchers what they can do with it and what
it means to them. They show off their own Web sites, or a
screen-saver that has been scanned from a holiday snapshot, says
Blyth. "You can see how the computer has taken on socially
significant meanings for the family. It has become integrated
into the home, often occupying a prominent place in the living
room. This broadcasts a message to visitors: look at what a
high-tech family we are!"

A home computer is not simply a functional appliance,
according to Blyth. "Its mere presence sends messages to
others outside the family, whilst it also stimulates and enriches
communication between members of the family. Often its presence
means new issues come up in conversation within the family
circle. Should mother or father start working at home more? Are
there risks involved with children spending hours in a chat room
with some stranger on the far side of the world? Should parents
worry about their children downloading pornographic
pictures?" New technology enables people to vocalize their
own concerns, introducing subjects that are not directly related
to the hardware itself. In this respect, technology plays a part
in determining family values and illustrating how families
perceive the world around them, she adds.

"I would like to tell designers not to pay too much
attention to what people say they want but to look at what they
actually do. I have been conducting a study on 20 British
families over several years. I have spent time at home with them,
gone shopping with them, had dinner with them and watched TV with
them. All the time, I observed the way they behave toward
technology," Blyth says. "If you look at technologies
like this, you forget that they are useful, and you begin to see
that they are good for looking at how people express themselves.
Most of the families I followed admitted outright that they
didn’t really need the appliances they have. They seem to be used
as devices to formulate identity and structure
"correct" forms of consumption."

Blyth explains: "Sometimes a piece of hardware becomes so
familiar that people stop seeing it as technology. I asked a few
people to photograph all the technological appliances in their
house. They often left out the telephone. "That’s not
technology," they said, because it had become so integrated
into the everyday activities of the home. So it seems that people
rank their domestic hardware in a certain order, according to how
it fits into their lives."

It is easily assumed that television has a purely
entertainment function in the home. But sociological research
suggests that this is not the full story, according to Blyth.
"TV programs provide consumers with a common area of
conversation. The same applies to home computers. There is a
widespread image of the teenagers barricading themselves in their
rooms endlessly playing computer games. Should we be concerned
about this? I don’t think so." Blyth believes that computer
games give children opportunities for contact with others at
school. "They talk about their game tactics and swap
software on the playground. This type of interaction generally
leads on to broader conversations on all kinds of
subjects."

Blyth feels these are facts that ought to interest designers.
"It has become clear to me through my research that
designers tend to think about consumers in limited ways. They are
strongly inclined to see consumers as economic entities with
clearly definable needs. Instead, in the words of the sociologist
Bourdieu, designers ought to think of themselves as ‘cultural
intermediaries’playing an active role in attaching to
products particular meanings and lifestyles with which consumers
will identify," she says.

"Designers tend to pigeonhole the public rather too
rigidly. The designer assumes, for example, that a teenager’s
time is spent either surfing the Web or slumped before the TV.
But this is not how teenagers see themselves. They are not
divided into purely active or purely passive individuals but are
a mix of both. Teenagers also like mixing their activities
together." Many would apparently be happy to watch four TV
channels at once while also engaged in an interactive activity,
says Blyth. "Current systems do not allow you to do
thisyou have to come out of couch potato mode to read a
text on the computer screen and respond to it."

The Internet is a good example of a technology that has social
implications that have not yet been recognized by designers,
according to Blyth. "What significance does the Internet
have for children, for example? We know they find it more
"creative" than television because it allows them to
explore actively. ‘It’s a boring day spent at home just watching
TV,’ children say." Essentially television has scarcely
changed over the yearsit remains a rectangular screen in a
black box. The telephone, on the other hand, has acquired a
colorful, playful exterior, Blyth adds.

"Fortunately there is a gradual trend toward the design
of consumer electronics that contains a better understanding of
the symbolic significance of goods," says Blyth. She cites
the colorful iMac computer as a good example. "An iMac in
your living room proclaims, ‘I am creative, not one of those
boring, conservative PC users.’ It becomes a conversation piece
as well as a computer."

Perhaps designers should pay more attention to these social
aspects of technology? "There is no point in trying to sell
a mobile phone solely on the grounds that it has more functions
than its competitors," says Blyth. "It might instead be
worth giving it a ‘cooler’ image than the othersgiving it
an emotional, expressive quality that symbolizes something to the
consumer. Designers should start to think about what a new
product means and expresses for users at the very beginning of
the design process and what they can do to facilitate
this."

Author

Matilda Blyth <matilda.blyth@brunel.ac.uk> has
spent 10 years researching the social and cultural aspects of
technological change. She is currently Web editor for Sky TV’s
technology channel and is completing her doctoral research at
Brunel University in the United Kingdom. Her research involved
ethnographic work with British Telecom’s research laboratories,
analyzing the production and consumption of interactive
technologies for the home.

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